SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (CNN) -- The official count of confirmed deaths grew to 15 Friday afternoon, one day after a 6.1-magnitude earthquake shook north central Costa Rica, a government emergency official said.

Reinaldo Carballo, a spokesman for the federal Commission for National Emergencies, said the updated death toll came from information given to the agency by Costa Rica Vice President Rodrigo Arias.

In addition, Carballo said, rescuers were trying to reach 300 tourists stranded in a hotel in Varablanca. Carballo said he did not know the tourists' nationalities or the name of the hotel.

There were conflicting reports on the number of dead from Thursday's earthquake. The Commission for National Emergencies had issued a news release earlier Friday saying the quake had killed four people.

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"I saw how the earth moved and how it took my family -- my aunt, my cousin and her babies," Miguel Angel Marin told CNN affiliate Teletica TV. "It was very hard because I wanted to save them, but I couldn't."

A sobbing Vilma Cambronero was asked what happened to her family.

"Some are well," she said. "Others are buried."

An unidentified woman told Teletica, "Everything started to move and everything fell on top of us. It was a miracle we got out."